


We Found Each Other Hungry

by LadyVisenya



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Daddy Issues, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Found Family, Gen, Period-Typical Sexism, Possessive Tom Riddle, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Teenage Tom Riddle, Time Travel, Tom Riddle Needs a Hug, Young Tom Riddle, but he's still an asshole, dark side of being beautiful, time loops and paradoxes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25570420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVisenya/pseuds/LadyVisenya
Summary: Marcelina Tonks has two problems in life. 1. figure out a way to get home. 2. get her adopted ward slash roommate and teenager Tom Riddle to stop spewing out pureblood nonsense at every turn (sure it wasn't her responsibility but she also couldn't just see a teen in a less than ideal orphanage and do nothing) 3. get people to stop calling her marcie.
Relationships: Tom Riddle | Voldemort/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 67





	1. non-frontline contributions

I come out of the kitchen for the first time all day, watching a grim faced Harry let tears fall down his cheeks at his owl's death. 

It was just an owl. I didn't understand what the big fuss was about when he'd managed to give old voldy the slip again. 

Had I looked so young at his age? Barely seventeen and already thrust into the middle of a war, with some baby fat still gracing his cheeks, all while having to flee for his life. At least the ministry was still holding up, now that they'd admitted _he_ was back. 

Hopefully it would never fall despite what her mum said as she stockpiled food and potion ingredients all while making plans with da about where we would all go hide out at. I had spent most of the summer canning and pickling. 

“Tea,” I offer Harry, waving my hand behind me and summoning cups for my parents and our very shaken guests. I had already slipped a tiny bit of calming draught after the night we’d all had. Waiting for our duo and said duo having to run from the death eaters. 

He smiles through the weariness, pushing his glasses up his nose, “yeah. Thank you Marcie.” 

I wrinkle my nose, having always hated the nickname Tonks had given me, unable to pronounce my full name properly. It had followed me from childhood into adulthood—unfortunately. “Marcelina actually,” I correct him, taking a seat next to my dad. 

“You've ruined another shirt,” my mum's hawkeyed gaze points out. From my sleeve edges down by my wrists to the splatter of potions along my front, I had indeed ruined another shirt while making potions for the order. 

I shrug, “Maybe if you didn't throw out my already stained shirts, I could just use those to brew in.”

My mum scowls at me, before pouring herself a cup of tea. If she notices the calming draught, she doesn't say anything. 

“You'll be going to the next safe place then,” I ask Harry, knowing better than to utter the name of the safe place out loud. Even while in good company it was important to be careful. The loss of Professor Dumbledore was still felt by all Order members. 

He nods, “I-yes.”

“Hell of a birthday present.” I smile grimly. 

“Marcelina,” dad cuts in sharply from where he's tending to Hagrid. 

I shrug, leaning back into the couch. “I was just-it is his birthday!”

Harry snorts, “Yippie for me.”

“That's the spirit,” I grin. And for a moment I can imagine we’ll all be going to Hogwarts in the fall and this boy I've watched grow up doesn't have the darkest wizard of all time after him. What I wouldn't give to be 15 again. The biggest thing I had to worry about was Owls and getting back at Fred and George for replacing my wand with their joke wands when I was writing down transfiguration essays. “Oh and you don't mind taking some vials I've finished, would you?” The words haven’t fully left my mouth and I'm already wincing as I watch a glazed over look take hold of Harry's bright green eyes. 

I never mean to, but it just happens. Sometimes it doesn't even take eye contact and people will get all flustered around me. 

I untuck my thick hair from behind my ear, letting the ink black locks fall freely, and look away, noting the time on the grandfather clock--2:13 in the morning. 

Harry, used to the little gift of veela heritage my birth parents had left me along with a wand and nothing else, shakes himself out of it and nods. “You're making potions for the order now.”

I nod, “There's a lot of people going into hiding. Can't exactly pop into any old apothecary anymore.” 

“That bad,” Harry wonders aloud, having been cut off from the wizarding world for the last few weeks. 

It had gotten bad very quickly after Dumbledore’s death. He'd been a dam that held back the worst of death eater ideals from taking hold of magical britain. I couldn't in good consciousness run off to study runes in Norway while good people like my dad were being forced into hiding all for being muggleborn. 

I nod, chewing the side of my mouth, not having anything to say at that. It was hard to stay positive when things kept getting worse everyday. 

Rumor held that soon even St. Mungos wouldn't be safe to go to if you were muggleborn. Or had a mixed background like me and Hagrid. 

“It's time for the portkey,” dad announces when it becomes clear no ones going to lighten the mood. Where are Fred and George when you need them? 

Harry and Hagrid follow Dad out into the night. 

He's not out there long, just sees them off, and comes back inside, checking the wards by the door. 

“Leave them alone Ted,” mum calls out, “I'll look them over in a minute.” My mother was better with wards than dad, having grown up in a magically protected house, she was more familiar with them. 

“I still think we should lay down some blood runes,” I comment, “even if it does make it harder for me to leave and enter. Not like I'm having much of a social life anyway.” Sue’s parents had decided to go back to China for at least the year, and she had gone with them. Our friendship now lived through owl post only. 

Not that mum was too keen on the idea of me going out much. She was already worried sick with Tonks still working as an auror. 

“Let's hope it doesn't come to that,” dad tries.

Mum sets her teacup down. “No. Marcelina's right. Even if we never activate them, we should at least have blood runes prepared to protect the house.” Her lip curls. 

It was known that Bellatrix Lestrange wanted our entire family dead. 

Even visiting Tonks had become incredibly complicated with her job and the well of anxiety that every glance from a stranger gave me. It had been easy to brush off people's, especially men's, slack jaws when they caught sight of me, unmistakably veela unlike Fleur who could pass as simply exquisitely beautiful. But now, every glance had me on edge. Every glance had me wondering if they were a death eater that would kill me for being part veela. For being a blood traitor. For being a muggle lover. 

“Let's all at least try and sleep shall we,” Dad offers, clearing the coffee table with a wave of his wand. 

As if on cue, mum yawns, “that was quite enough excitement for the year,” she deadpans. “Though I've no doubt you'll be off to that wedding?” 

I nod, wiping the sleep from my eyes, “just have to finish another round of pepper me up. Have to send those out to all the safe houses.” 

“Well finish that up Marcie,” dad says, getting up, ready to turn in for the night, “and go to bed. You'll be no use to anyone if your dead on your feet.”

“And you are,” mum reminds me, wagging her finger even as dad wraps his arm around her waist, half dragging her off to bed, “helping me weed the garden tomorrow. Bright and early.”

A lifetime of living with her taught me that there was no use in groaning or complaining. My mum was more than willing to summon a splash of water with a wave of her wand all to get me out of bed. “Yes yes,” I wave off, heading back into the kitchen. “I'll get up.”

Or just pull an all nighter. 

It was already 3 in the morning. 

What was three more hours? 

“Goodnight,” dad calls out, leaving me alone with the sound of cauldrons bubbling and the crickets out in the yard. 

Fixing the vegetable patch tomorrow was going to be a pain in the arse. 

For that alone I'd AK Voldemort.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? i really have no clue if this fic is any good and have a few chapters written but i want feedback if i should continue and see the story through.


	2. 1998

The burrow is chaos when I arrive. The weasleys split up between levitating chairs and tables and fixing up tent extensions on the main house for their guests. I catch a glimpse of Harry and Ron messing around in Mrs Weasley's garden instead of degnoming it. 

“More potions,” I say by way of greeting, very unsure where to place my bag of concoctions. Usually, the burrow is an organized mess where Molly's yelling and cleaning and has her knitting things out on  _ her  _ chair in case she gets a moment to herself, but today it's just a mess. Wedding decorations have taken over all the countertops. There's flower vases with the date and Bill and Fleur engraved on the surface as well as white and silver table covers making the dining table unusable. 

“Ah Marcie be a dear and set that under the table,” Molly says, “I'll get to that sometime this week. . .hopefully.”

“Do you need any help,” I offer, setting my bag under the table as well. Anything would be better than being cooped up at home. It had been months since I'd gone anywhere by myself. As Moody liked to say, “constant vigilance.” 

She smiles warmly, before embracing me once she puts her wand down from charming her way through cleaning the walls of the burrow. “Oh you don't have to dear, but since you're here, do you mind tying these ribbons around the vases? And change them into lavender. Fleur and I don't think this shade of periwinkle works as well.” 

“Alright,” I nod, drawing my wand and trying to find a spot to sit while I work. 

“The delacours will be here later today,” Molly says, now that she has a captive audience, “and I still haven't finished cleaning. I sent my Ginny and Hermione to clean the upstairs bathrooms. Will you be staying the night? The weddings only a day away and there's still so much to do! Once you’re done with the vases help me take the tablecloths and chair covers out to the tents Marcie.”

I nod, setting to do my task. “If it’s too much trouble I can always just come over for the wedding,” I offer, not wanting to impose when she had two families to house as well as Harry and Hermione. 

“Nonsense,” Molly waves off, “there’s plenty of space for everyone here.”

“Not aunt Muriel,” Bill warns, as he comes into the kitchen, filling a pitcher of water up from the sink. “Mum we went over this.”

“She is your aunt.”

“Bellatrix is my aunt,” I add, “you don’t see us inviting her over for christmas.” 

Bill laughs easily while Molly just shakes her head. 

Arthur comes running in, “the minister’s here. He wants to talk to Harry, Ron and Hermione.”

I scowl. Scrimgeour was a step up from Fudge, barely. “What could he want with them,” I mutter. They were now of age and it was true that Harry was number one of Voldemort's hit list, but still, after what the ministry had put us through the year with Umbridge and even now repeatedly said there was no need for the Order of the Phoenix even as more people went into hiding and the Ministry didn’t seem to be making any headway with the death eaters. 

“Go with them Arthur,” Molly urges. “They’re just kids.”

We wait listlessly in the kitchen, having no choice but to continue preparing for the wedding. Life went on, even during war. 

“You going to stay here Marcelina,” Bill asks.

“That or crash at Tonks’,” I explain, “I dunno if mum’ll let me come if I go home. Too many people according to her.” I tuck my dark hair behind my ears. 

“She would’ve made a brilliant auror,” he replies with a grin. 

Arthur comes back into the kitchen, before uttering quietly, “Dumbledore left them all something from his will and testament.”

Molly’s mouth opens in surprise, “What!”

Arthur nods, grabbing the bags with decorations barely visible from the inside, “Our Ron must’ve left a big impression on him.”

I chew the side of my mouth, thinking. It was known by now that Harry was the chosen one. It was obvious that Dumbledore would’ve left him and his closest friends, who were always getting into trouble together, something to help them. I still wasn’t sure how Harry was going to take on the darkest wizard in history. Not when there were so many mysterious deaths that everyone knew were the death eaters even when the dark mark wasn’t flying above a house. The war seemed so much bigger than Harry and Voldemort. 

Bill shrugs, biting into an apple, “can’t be that big of a deal if the ministry let ‘em have it.”

“Bill!” Molly says with a shake of her head. 

“What,” he says, laughing as he steps back from his mother, making to get out of the burrow, “it’s true!”

They stick me with Hermoine and Ginny, a pile of blankets make up my bed. Most of them are knitted and clearly Molly’s own homemade batch. Hermoine is absent, still up in Ron’s room plotting the night away with her friends. 

Ginny sighs, looking through her closet once more. “Mum really got me a lacey cover up. I’ll look like a cupcake if I wear that over my dress.”

I snort. “That's what you get for being the baby of the family,” I note, thinking about how much my own mother coddles me, “I would know.”

She laughs, “True. I think mum still doesn't know I've had boyfriends before.”

I laugh, “really? My mums just hoping I don't run off and join the aurors even though I've already finished my runes apprenticeship so why would I join the aurors now.”

“Tonks left her traumatized.”

“Mums worry a lot on the reg,” I comment, changing into an old t shirt and shorts, ready to go to sleep, “this war isn't helping things any.”

“I'll say,” she laughs. “Dad isn't sure I should even go back to Hogwarts this year. Not with-not since Dumbledore isn't headmaster anymore.”

I sigh. “It's still Hogwarts though. The school didn't fall during the last war. You've got McGonagall there. You know who they've got for defense this year?”

She shrugs, “gotta be slim pickings. There is a jinx on the job after all.” 

“Can’t be worse than Umbridge,” I utter, thinking back on the nasty woman who knew just the right way to rub people’s noses in  _ the rules _ . Umbridge had been positively gleeful to dock points on my defense essay for my margins being one tenth of a centimeter too large. Not to mention the fact that I’d joined the DA, but that's besides the point.

There was no way I was failing my defense Newt. If my sister could get an O in Defense then so could I. 

“Easy for you to say,” Ginny giggles, turning over in her bed so that she’s looking down at me on the floor, her fiery red hair falling over her eyes, “you don’t have to go back to Hogwarts.”

“It is nice to be done with school,” I admit, laying my head down on one of the many pillows Molly had seemingly pulled out of a cupboard. She was not the type to throw something out when there was still use left. “Now if only this war could be over so I can finally run off and study the runic work left behind in norway.”

Ginny almost chokes, “that sounds so boring! Who wants to go on vacation in Norway? Wouldn’t you want to, I dunno, go someplace exciting like Spain or Egypt. There’s loads of runes there and it’s amazing!”

“Yeah yeah,” I laugh, “I get it. You went to Egypt once. Good for you.”

“I went to Egypt and all mum let me bring back was a stupid fez,” she grumbles. “Wouldn’t even let me look at the runic bracelets. One of them blew a raspberry at anyone looking at you weird!”

“Didn’t Fred and George smuggle a flying carpet back,” I ask, trying to remember that summer. All we’d done was go on a camping trip out to Scotland where mum had broken a heel. She was still cross about it to this day. The cobbler had charged her a small fortune to fix the shoe. 

“They almost did,” she rolls her eyes, “we made it past the ministry’s checkpoint in Southampton but dad overheard them and made us go turn it into customs.”

“Bloody pair of morons,” I laugh, unsurprised. 

“That sums up all my brothers.”

I snort. 

Mrs. Weasley gives me the task of cutting the flowers from her garden. She’s carefully grown the most beautiful powder blue hydrangeas and white roses in her garden, dwarfing the section where carrots and potatoes and turnips are growing. 

I take the gardening scissors, taking care to only cut the flowers just on the cusp of blooming for tomorrow. I go the extra mile and cast a runic spell for good luck on each individual flower. It is a wedding after all. 

With a quick wave of my wand, I cut the thorns off each stem before placing them into my growing pile of flowers. It was the sort of small tedious task that I could get lost in, hyperfocusing even as my thoughts drifted off as I thought over the blood wards I was preparing. Like all blood magic, blood wards were considered dark magic. But the theory was fascinating. 

In my apprenticeship we’d gone over the major runic applications however briefly. And while I’d never cast a blood ward before, I was confident in my ability and understanding of the theory to try a set at home. 

The trickiest part was incorporating me without compromising the integrity of my dad’s sigil. My thoughts whirled with variations on the same ward. The death eaters would be watching the house now more than ever since Harry was known to have landed there even if they couldn’t see past the current wards on my home. 

“Please stop,” a voice as lovely as a gentle breeze calls out behind me, “you are fascinant. . .thralling. You must not!” 

The tall elegant woman peers over at me, her lips pursed. She’s clad in leaf green iridescent robes that on anyone else might be too bright and over the top, but her natural confidence paired with her height let her pull off the vivid color. 

This must be Fleur’s mum. They share the same golden blonde hair, that falls effortlessly around their face, and the same straight edged nose. 

I tilt my head over at her, coming out of my thoughts as I realize that she must have the same magnetic draw that I have. Before Fleur, I’d never met another part veela witch in my life. I was very curious to learn more about that part of my heritage. “I didn’t mean to,” I answer honestly. I never meant to enthrall anyone. People have been staring strangely at me since I was a child: ranging from harmless things like “what a pretty child” to “filthy half breed”. 

But it was never that bad until I became a teenager and had grown men following me into Flourish and Blotts. 

Like my sister, thralling seemed to be linked to my emotions so that the moment a cute boy had me blushing, he’d be all moon eyed and falling over himself to help me with my bag. 

It left a bad taste in my mouth, like cream that's gone rancid. 

“Ah,” she nods, levitating the cut flowers, “you must ‘ve the lost veela! Poor petit puce! You ‘ave no one to teach you. You must control the thrall.”

“Will it stop people from looking at me,” I ask eagerly, wishing that boys would stop thinking it was okay to whistle as I walked by. 

“Non,” Mrs. Delacour says, shaking her head once. “We are,” she gestures at herself, “very beautiful,” she finishes haughtily, nose in the air. “Nothing can change that. But it will keep ‘ze idiots from drooling.” She runs a finger down the corner of her mouth in example. 

I laugh. “That would be helpful. But how do you control it?”

“Practice,” she shrugs. “Enthrall men and woman until you can control it.”

“Of course,” I mutter, my good mood evaporating. I hated the way people looked at me when they were enthralled, as if I was less a person with hopes and dreams than just a particularly nice thing to have. Like I was nothing more than a pretty face and all the O’s I’d gotten in Newts meant nothing in comparison. 

“ ‘z is all we can do,” she smiles as radiant as a patronus being cast in the dead of night, “do you. . .is fire sometimes just . . .appear?”

I shake my head, “could that happen? I read that Veela can throw fire but I’ve never burst into flames or anything.”

“ ‘z is rare,” she admits, sending the cut flowers over to the tents on the other side of the burrow with a wave of her wand, “only when you are very very mad. And it can be just smoke.”

I frown, trying to imagine what that would be like. Just another way I was different. But it was all easier when my sister was just as weird as me. Though being able to change my hair color at will without having to charm it seemed like a much better ability to have. 

She pats my hand, “ma petit puce! You will learn. Send me a letter if you ‘ave anymore questions when there’s not a wedding in one day!”

“There’s still so much to do,” I concur. Mrs. Weasley had taken most of the reins since Fleur was too busy being in love with Bill to care about making sure each table was decorated perfectly with the tablecovers smoothed out. 

“I vill be back for the rest of the flowers,” she tells me, striding off to check on how the vase arrangements were coming along. Fleur's cousins and sisters were on that job. 

“Help yourself dear,” Mrs Weasly shouts out as she hurries about the burrow waving her wand and disappearing out towards the wedding tents. 

The kitchen is a mess of people moving about, trying to find food that wasn’t labelled “don’t you dare eat this” and started screaming if your hand hovered near it for too long. 

Ron offers me a sandwich, taking a seat next to me, before talking with his mouth full, “can’t believe Fred and George used the shop excuse to get out of helping.”

“Really,” I say with a smirk, “I saw them chatting with Fleur’s cousins earlier.”

“They didn’t even invite me to Bill’s stag night,” he says shaking his head. 

“They just had a drink at Tonks’ place,” I offer. “Lupin cracked open some ancient bottle of firewhiskey.” My sister had spilled the very bland beans as she dropped off Teddy before running off to work. She always took forever to drop him off, stopping to have a bite before realizing she was late. 

“ ‘s not fair,” he mutters crossley. 

“Not like you three ever tell anyone anything,” I shoot back, biting into the interesting blend of hard cheese tomato and some type of jame that went surprisingly well with the saltiness of the cheese. 

He flushes tomato red. 

“You make the sandwich?”

Ron nods, “Made quite a few actually. Figured it was better than asking mum what we  _ can  _ eat. Went off on Bill like a nutter when she realized he wasn’t going to cut his hair for the wedding.” 

I laugh, “but it’s his wedding.”

“Let's be honest,” Rom grins, “this is mum’s wedding. Maybe a dash of Fleur, but this is mum’s wedding.”

“Never been happier that my mum has always been quite hands off. And liberal with the hexes when we went shopping. Not that I think letting me play with potions before Hogwarts was very safe,” I note. “Could’ve blown up the house.”

“ ‘M surprised Tonks’ didn't.”

“Oh,” I grin, “Tonks wasn’t allowed in the kitchen. Neither was mum much. She’s got a good nose for potions but the woman can’t even boil a pot of water. Neither can I for that matter.”

“In that case, it’ll be twenty galleons for the sandwich,” Ron grins. 

“Oi!” 

The morning of the wedding comes way too soon. I’d only slept a handful of hours, having been up past midnight putting up tassels and charming the ceiling of the tents to set off little fireworks the spelled ‘Bill & Fleur’. 

My hands were beyond cramped. 

My hair was a tangled mess. 

So much for being part veela, my hair could easily pass for a kneazle’s hairball. 

Ginny and Hermoine have already gone. 

I figure that all the bathrooms have probably been commandeered by the large assortment of Delacours and Weasleys present. Not to mention the guests will start arriving soon and I haven’t even brushed my teeth. So, not wanting to fight my way to a bathroom, I make due with the mirror in Ginny’s room, glad that tonight I’d be back to sleeping in my own bed. I comb the tangles in my thick wavy hair out, slathering a bit of oil on my hands and massaging it into my black hair before brushing my teeth and casting a refresher spell over my dress. 

It was funny, looking back, that I really thought I wasn’t adopted for ages. Tonks took after dad, in both looks and character. And I had assumed I took after my mum. We had a passing resemblance. Both of us had dark hair that frames our faces like the branches of a willow tree, full mouths, strong brows, and large downturned eyes. But her’s were a light amber brown whereas my eyes were as dark as soil after the rain. 

That’s where the similarities ended. 

And the dead giveaway was the fact both my parents were white while I was quite obviously a tawny brown. 

I throw on my mauve dress, loose and flowy, perfect for a summer wedding all while not clinging to my body at all, and pat on a hint of rouge to my cheekbones, tilting my face around to see how the red looks at different angles. Hopefully well blended. 

Hopefully there was a wedding breakfast too. 

I hadn’t eaten anything since the sandwich Ron had made yesterday. 

I’m digging out Bill and Fleur’s wedding present from my bag when Hermoine, Harry, and Ron waltz in. Hermoine’s already dolled up, looking incredibly pretty in a simple red dress that hugs her chest before flaring out at her slim waist. Maybe I should stop eating so many cheese toasties. 

Harry’s got dress robes on, but is failing to get his hair to cooperate. Ron is still wearing pajamas. 

Both boys blush. 

Kindly, more for my benefit than theirs, I ignore it. 

“Already hiding out from the guests,” I ask Hermoine. 

“Aunt Muriel was the first one here,” Ron answers grimly, taking a seat on Ginny’s bed. 

“She can’t be that bad,” Harry tries. 

“No mate,” Ron shakes his head, “she makes Umbridge look like a saint.”

My interest is piqued, wondering if his aunt Muriel really is that bad. 

“Honestly Ron,” Hermione rolls her eyes, before closing the door, muttering a nonverball silencing spell, and rounding her attention on me. “We actually wanted to talk to you.” 

“Me,” I ask, wondering what I’d done in the last few days. Maybe they needed a potion made now that Snape had revealed his true colours. Or had some other dark evil and mysterious task to get through. These three had a knack for stumbling upon any schemes within a hundred kilometer radius. They were worse than Tonks when she was at school: having blown up her cauldron within the first week of classes. 

Harry nods solemnly. 

These last few days, full of planning and endless errands, had made it easy to push the ongoing war into the back of my mind. But Mad Eye was dead. Dumbledore was long gone. 

I swallow thickly, wondering what they had to say. “Well out with it,” I utter, bracing myself and taking a seat on Hermione's folded out bed. Unlike Ginny's, she had made hers before making her way out of our shared room. 

“Um. . .” Harry says nervously, as we all glance at him, the ringleader by right of being the chosen one even when all of us in the know knew Hermione was the only thing keeping them from leaping before taking a look. 

“Do you have any idea why Professor Dumbledore wanted you to have this,” Ron cuts in, handing me a thick creamy envelope with my name in his neat spidery handwriting.  _ Marcelina Tonks.  _

Never having exchanged any sort of conversation outside of pleasantries when coming in and out of Grimmauld Place, I shrug. “No.”

Hermione elaborates, cracking open an old copy of the tales of beedle and bard to an elaborate lithograph cover for The Warlock's Hairy Heart. Mum had thought all those tales were rubbish compared to grimms fairy tales with their troll princesses and girls eating evil wolves. “It was in here. Funny enough, it wasn't there when Scrimouger gave the book over to me. The letter only appeared last night when we were looking over what Dumbledore left us.”

I raise an eyebrow skeptically, “any special Voldemort killing weapon.”

Harry chuckles humorlessly, “afraid not. Could've used it right about now.”

I sigh, “I'm going to guess you want to see what's in the letter?” Could Dumbledore have known who my birth parents were? The man did seem to have connections everywhere like any wizard with his impressive reputation: all his power and potential and he'd chosen to dedicate his life to teaching students instead of going the rat race as my dad called the bureaucratic nightmare that was the upper echelons of the ministry. 

Hermione eagerly nods. 

Harry leans forward. 

Ron taps his foot. 

I open the envelope, not sure what to expect.

The letter inside is short. And in usual Dumbledore fashion, is seemingly pointless. But then why go through all this trouble to get the letter to me?

_ Dear Lina, _

_ The fairy tales were right. Love is the most powerful magic of all. My favorite has always been East of Sun West of Moon. A nice change of pace wouldn't you agree?  _

_ Sincerely,  _

_ An old friend.  _

Somehow, from a paper thin envelope, a bracelet falls out. It's navy blue enameled studded with pink diamonds, and about as thick as my pinky. 

I don't recognize it.

Harry looks disappointed.

“It's a talisman,” Hermione offers, glancing around at us. “They're very popular conduits for magic in southwest asia. Wanda never really caught on.”

“I imagine there's some resentment left over from being colonized,” I note, running my fingers over the bracelet, the pink diamonds jutting out over the surface like beads. Then, I can't help but wonder, “do you think my birth parents, or one of them, was southwest asian?” And did this mean Dumbledore had known them. Most likely my dad then. My mum had to be veela. 

It just made sense. 

Hermione shrugs. 

“Well put it in,” Ron urges.

I see no harm. It's just a bracelet. A woman's bracelet in my opinion but fashion must be different in other parts of the world. 

I slid the bangle onto my wrist. 

Nothing happens. 

“Well,” I tell them, folding up the letter into my small leather flip bag I was going to use for the day, “I’m going to find something to eat. And see if I can finally use the bathroom.”

“Maybe Fred and George are finally done getting ready,” Harry says with a smile. 

“Doubt it.”

I help take all the food that's been cooked out to the main wedding tent. Some of it was brought over from france: little swan pastries that flutter their wings and ever replenishing cups of champagne and wine. On the way, as I set the platters down, I grab a snack here and there for myself from the back where it isn't obvious. 

Fred catches me and winks, taking a glass of champagne even as the guests start arriving and we wait for Fleur. 

Mrs Weasley's busy fussing over Bill, running after him with cards with his vows written on them even as he falls into conversation with some of his friends from work, laughing easily as a hulking arab man with an eye patch. Another curse worker more than likely. 

A cohort of redheads arrive. More Weasleys, some getting a less than warm reaction like the old woman with a cloud of grey hair and dour expression on her mouth, lips curved down. 

I wish Tonks would arrive already. I know she's leaving Teddy with mum again, but merlin are huge functions easier when you have someone to stick by. The Weasleys are too busy with the wedding for me to go bother. 

And Harry's in disguise so it's not like I can just stick by him. 

I sit in a table off to the side, watching people arrive and Molly rush to greet them, parting the crowd in her wake. Everyone's in their best robes, from simple black ones to blue and orange tweed patterns. Luna easily stands out in an egg yolk yellow dress next to her father's glittering gold dress robes. 

I wave when she catches my eye.

“Marcie, right,” Charlie says taking a seat at my table. 

“Yeah,” I smile easily, trying not to smile too much. “That's me. You seen my sister yet?”

“No,” he says, “sorry. Hiding out from mum. She keeps trying to set me up with any woman that's not family my cousins bring.”

I wrinkle my nose. “Gross. My mum only complains that my career will take me far from home.”

“I think mum got over that one when Bill ran off to Egypt,” Charlie admits. “And there's loads of us to begin with.”

“She might be hopeful now that Bills looking to get settled back home.”

“Don't you dare say that,” the second eldest Weasley cries, “you'll jinx me. Romania's the best! The community out there,” he grins, a spark in his eyes as he looks at me. “There's all these communities of magical beings that you just don't find here.”

“Not just dragons,” I tease. 

He snorts. “The dragons are my favorite. You're part veela right? Like them! There's an entire village near the border with Bulgaria. Not that I've been invited there. Still a lot of distrust for wizards after all that's happened.”

Seeing an opportunity, I grab it by the horns, “can veela be male?” Had I been wrong this whole time? Was it my mother that had been the witch? How had they died? Or was that my veela father had never even known I existed. 

“Of course,” Charlie laughs, “I guess we think of veela as female, but that's not a hard rule. We just don't interact with veela enough to know any better.”

“Oi! I'm sitting right here,” I grin. 

“Want to dance,” he asks, “think the slow songs are finally over.”

“Alright.”

Tonks wraps her arms around me from behind, “Marcie!”

“Marcelina,” I correct, turning to face her with a smile. I wasn't sure which Weasley cousin I was dancing with at the moment, and I didn't much care now that Tonks was here. “Late as ever I see.”

“You sound like mum,” she laughs. Lupin stands at her side in shabby grey robes, looking just as tired as the deep shadows under my sister's eyes. He greets me with an easy smile all the same. 

“Well you are Nymphadora,” I point out. “ ‘ello Remus. Have you tried the opera cakes yet? They're amazing. I think I'm moving to france.” I pat my chubby belly. At least the dancing would help. 

“Hello Marcelina. Have you seen Harry? I'm going to ask him to be Teddy's godfather.”

“He's a redhead at the moment,” I offer, glancing around the room. “Ron stuck a rose on his robes to keep track of him. The men were supposed to wear white roses you see.”

“Molly been a right terror then?” Tonks grins.

“Worse than at Grimmauld place. My wrist still hurts from all the cleaning charms.” 

“I'll see you two in a bit then,” Remus says, going on a search for Harry. 

I lead my sister to the table I'd nabbed for us. “Mum day anything about-,”

“How you never went home after dropping off the potions,” Tonks snorts. “Gave me an earful. You're lucky I broke her in for you. She sent me a howler when I blew up the greenhouse in third year.” 

“How do you even blow up the greenhouse,” is my question. 

“I was practicing my defense spells,” she admits, “instead of juicing the pods. I just don't have the patience to juice each one of those little suckers!”

“It's not that bad,” I counter, “better than listening to Binns drone on.”

“True. Still don't like it.”

We hit up the buffet table as she regales me with her latest exploits which mostly involve standing pretty and receiving medals so the prophet has good news to publish. “It's a bloody disgrace,” she mutters, catching her balance before her plate can go flying in the air. “What you get Bill and Fleur?”

“Mum got them a set of china. Apparently it's what all couples want on for their wedding,” I shrug. They had been a boring white with a red pastoral pattern. “I don't think it's either of their style though.” 

“They can always regift it,” Tonks says with a wiggle of her brows, stopping to talking to every single person on the way back to our table. My plate was mostly cheese potatoes and more pastries. The french really did have something special going on with their cakes and breads. 

I laugh, “is that what you did?”

She shakes her head with a grin, “mum gave me that set of knives remember. They never lose their sharpness.”

“Okay,” I nod, “that's a good gift. I could go for a knife.”

“You don't cook,” she points out. “remember that rice you tried to make.”

“No ones perfect,” I say, sticking my nose in the air. 

My sister snorts, slapping my arm, “oh shut it you! You spent an entire summer bragging about getting all Os.”

“Eight Owls is nothing to scoff at.”

Fleur manages to move about in her wedding dress without tripping or snagging the hem. 

I grab a glass of champagne and dance with some of Fleur’s cousins. A boy with a blonde mop top despite it being obvious he doesn't know a word in english and my french ends and begins at  _ merci.  _ The set of blonde lithe women who throw alluring looks at strangers and then giggle when their jaws go slack. It's the most fun I've had in ages. 

My apprenticeship wasn't easy. And being cooped up all the time while helping the Order didn't help my social life. 

I wish Sue was still in England. 

She'd been my closest friend at school. My only real friend before I'd fallen in with the Order like my sister before me. 

I wander around listlessly at the party, glass in hand, feeling lonely and lost in the sea of familiar faces. These last few days, I'd still felt a gap between me and the Weasleys, feeling left out even though I had no reason to feel that way and wishing I had my sisters ease in striking up conversation instead of sitting about and waiting for conversation to happen. 

A patronus explodes into the center of the dance floor. Kingsley’s voice filling the wedding tent. “The ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.” 

Chills run down my spine, dread filling the pit of my stomach. 

Cracks ring out in the crowd as people panic and apparate away. 

I look over at the crowd, realizing no one here was a muggleborn save for Hermione. Not that being known blood traitors was any better in some people's eyes. 

I should go. 

I need to go. 

I need to move. 

But dread has me standing still as people chaotically flee. 

Spells are thrown and I realize that death eaters have arrived, green light shooting out from their wands.

I need to go. 

I search the crowd for my sister's pink hair, but can't see anything. 

The tables once piled with food have toppled over. 

The cake lays on the floor, topper broken. 

It's only a quick portego on my part that saves me from being stupefied as a death eater notices me standing still like a sitting duck. It's enough to get me moving, reaching for my wand, and a second later I'm apparating away. 

I can get my things later. 

The familiar squeezing feeling fills my head, vistas flashing by too quickly for me to know as I think of home. Mum and dad. I was going to have to go into hiding after all.

Panic fills my mouth, my jaw tightening. 

Then, the spinning starts. 

That's not supposed to happen. 

I try to push past it, thinking hard of my parents cottage, but my vision swims, black spots dancing across my eyes. 

Something had gone wrong with my apparition. 

I should've been home by now. Instead, darkness had filled my vision even as the world spun around me. 

Had Voldemort tainted even something as common as apparition? 

My wrist burns, the bracelet heating up like a hot poker and then-

darkness.

  
  



	3. 1940

When I wake up, it's with a jolt that makes my head swim from the quick sudden movement. The room is bare: the bed I'm in only has a thin blanket. Nowhere I recognize and I immediately panic. The ministry had fallen. 

I had to assume I was in danger until I got to my parents or met up with dad at a safe house. Maybe there was time for me to leave the country. 

But then who would help the Order?

I'm still in my dress from the wedding. Only now it's wrinkled to hell and back. Mum would scold me if she could see me now. 

Mum. 

This time, I move slowly, taking my time to stand up, not wanting to black out again. How long had I been unconscious? 

My hand goes instinctively to my pocket for my wand, Mad Eye’s advice ringing in my head. I had no reason to hex anyone as of now, but I wanted to be prepared. Better safe than sorry in these dark times. 

My wand is missing, and panic rises in my belly like a wave of nausea. Bloody hell. My wandless portego was terrible, nothing more than a brittle paper thin shield. I’d have to hope my _bombardia_ faster than any spell thrown at me. 

I take a deep breath and open the door. 

Children's voices ring out from other rooms and down the hall. The walls are grey and the window at the end of the hall is boarded up with wood, glass planes missing. 

Muggles. 

I must’ve apparated somewhere in muggle England. 

It was a small miracle I hadn’t splinched myself and bled to death when I passed out. A distracted mind was killer when apparating. 

My fingers run over the bracelet. It’s no longer burning hot, seemingly harmless on my wrist once more. There’s no way Dumbledore would’ve given me a cursed bracelet. Maybe it had helped? Talisman didn’t behave the way wands did after all.

I’d have to do more research on the subject matter when I got home. 

Should I even go home or were death eaters watching the house? 

Was it safe or should I go into hiding?

I wanted nothing more than to talk to mum or dad. They’d know exactly what to do. 

“Ah, you’re awake my dear,” an older woman, grey streaked hair pinned into a small tight bun in a shabby baby blue blouse and long navy skirt that fell to her calf, says with a tight smile, her eyes just the tiniest bit too bright as she looked at me. “Was starting to worry we’d have to call the doctor after all!”

“Thank you,” I tell her, “for taking care of me when I was. . .”

“Oh it’s no problem,” the woman says, her hand wrapping around my arm and leading me down the hall a touch to roughly, “Mr. Whalley found you passed out on the steps on his way back from the butchers. Not that our rations got us much mind you. Just a bit of flavor for the stew.”

I nod, ignoring how a little girl with dried tears on her cheeks, and snot on her dress follows after us, her eyes completely glazed over as she looks at the back of my head unabashedly. I wish she’d stop but she’s a muggle so it’s not her fault. 

It would almost be better to be spit at for not being human. 

“I’ll have to thank him,” I tell the woman. “What did you say your name was again?” She hadn’t-wait, rations? Muggles didn’t ration food. Not anymore. . .not since. 

“Mrs. Cole,” the woman answers, leading you down the stairs into a large room full of children ranging in ages from toddlers on unsteady feet looking around as if trying to figure out the person likeliest to indulge them for a bit to acne riddled teenagers looking grim faced as they messed around with school books. “I am the matron of this orphanage with the help of my scullery, Martha. She was an orphan here once too. Lucky girl to have a steady roof over her head.”

As if in a horror novel, the children of the orphanage turn towards me with heavy stares, greedy needy want plain as day. And maybe it would’ve been curiosity at the interloper that had been found passed out on their front door, but it was never that easy. 

I hated this type of attention. 

The older boys go dumbstruck, lips curving up like I’m a painting and not a real living girl who prefers honey in my tea and still refuses to eat my peas even if I was no longer hiding them in my napkin. 

All except one. 

It’s enough to snag my attention. 

The dark haired boy sits on the ground in a corner by himself with a thick book, not bothering to look up: making a point of not looking up from the way he glances at the other children with a scowl all too knowing. Could he know? 

Rations. 

That meant the last muggle war. My grandparents had told me about that much when we’d gone over and spent the afternoon mushroom hunting in the woods and roasting carrots with thick syrup. Tonks and I had been more than happy to get our little hands dirty, coming back to mum with mud all over our dresses. 

How had I travelled all the way back to the last muggle war? 

That would’ve been nearly fifty years before Bill and Fleurs wedding. 

There weren’t any time turners left anymore. 

As if sensing my gaze, the boy looks up. 

He looks younger than Ginny, but old enough for Hogwarts. 

His brown eyes met mine with an intensity I don’t expect from such a boy on the edge of adolescence: intense with none of the sticky desire the other boys have in their eyes. 

Maybe he was a muggleborn? 

“-of course we’ll get you something light for you to eat before setting you on your way. Do you have anyone you want me to call Miss. . .”

The boy looks away first, fixing his gaze back on his book with an ease that has me questioning if he even looked up at me at all. 

My grandparents were children. 

My mum wasn’t even born yet. 

The first surname that pops into my head is that of a bollywood actress. “Chawla.” I answer with as much nonchalance as I can summon, focusing my attention on Mrs. Cole. “Marcelina Chawla.” I knew nothing of my heritage on either side. Whatever part of southeast asia my mother had been from, or if she’d grown up in the UK like Padma, was lost to me in the same way as I had been left without any knowledge about being part veela. 

But while mum and dad couldn’t do much about the veela half, they had taken me to the theater to watch bollywood movies in their earnest attempts to have me “connect” with my heritage. 

Tonks had loved the dance numbers even if she did have two left feet. 

Sometimes literally. 

“Miss Chawla,” Mrs. Cole nods, half leading half dragging me into the kitchen and away from the prying stares. A bare table takes up most of the room with a random assortment of chairs and stools. “Would you like a drink? I find that a swing of whiskey always does me good.”

“Just the food will be fine,” I reply, looking at the scullery, busy scrubbing large banged up pots and pans. Her grey face doesn’t even look up at our entrance. 

“Martha,” Mrs. Cole orders coldly, “go tell the girls to start on the upstairs floors. No reason for there to be new stains when we’ve plenty of hands.” 

“Yes Ma’am,” Martha says, all hunched in on herself, back already bent despite looking to be about my age. 

Mrs. Cole must’ve assumed I was some well to do young woman. Life had been harder for muggles during the war after all. It took its toll. 

Oh! That meant Grindelwald. 

Too bad I’d forgotten most of history as soon as my exam was done. I couldn’t remember one let alone all twelve goblin rebellions now even if I had received an O on the exam. 

I had to get my wand and then figure out how to get home. 

Bad things happen to people that mess with time. 

I didn’t want to age fifty years the moment I got home like the witch that had five hundred years rush into her in a matter of seconds. 

Mrs. Cole smiles, pouring me a bowl of thin and watery looking soup. She’s about to say something else when a bang rings out from the other room. The thrall she’s slipped into passes, her features twisting with fury as her skin heats up cherry red, a dragon about to breath out flames, “Boy! You better not have done anything!” She storms back out to the other room. 

With so many boys and girls, how can she expect them to know who she’s yelling about. 

With a skeptical look, I try the soup. 

It’s as watery as I’d expect, with a random assortment of minced vegetables and the flavor of chicken. 

After my journey, however it was that I got here, this is the perfect light meal. 

My stomach churns as I realize that this was their regular meal for the children. I put down my spoon, feeling guilty about taking any food from their mouths. Food was rationed. It wasn’t as if they could wave a wand and multiply their stock of vegetables and meat. 

Oh a slice of sourdough would go perfectly with a thick slab of butter. 

“You’re like me,” the boy from earlier notes, taking a seat in front of me as he looks me over with a rare confidence I hadn’t found in myself until I had gone into my last year at Hogwarts. “Well,” he says, tilting his head thoughtfully, “not exactly like me.”

So he was a muggleborn. 

I’d been right. 

“Part veela,” I offer, resting my cheek against my hand, having set my bowl aside. “Witch. Aspiring runist. Shouldn’t you be in a wizarding orphanage?”

His jaw tightens. It’s the only tell that I’ve struck a nerve. 

Not everyone could be as graceful as Luna when strutting about with radishes for earrings and giant lion’s heads for hats. Though I did try to let other people’s comments slide off me like water sliding off a duck’s back, the way my mum walked about everywhere she went, chin up and her eyes forward. 

He lets the silence hang.

“I’m Marcelina,” I offer. “You wouldn’t happen to know where my wand went do you? I’d hate to have to accio it. Probably have the ministry come down on my head for it.”

The teen produces my wand, a rich auburn wood smoothly carved, from his flannel coat pocket that dwarfed his lithe frame. “No one else saw. The muggles would have snapped it,” he finishes with a dark sneer. 

“They wouldn’t have known what it was though,” I note with a frown. What had happened that made him so wary of the other children. 

Accidental magic was a nuisance for parents at the best of times, with me having turned my hair pink to match my sister on many occasions throughout our childhood before I got my wand, and causing my mum to pour herself a glass of wine. But it could be terrifying for muggleborns and their parents before they knew about the magical community. 

He doesn’t answer. 

They must suspect then, Mrs. Cole and the older children for sure. They must have witnessed him performing accidental magic as a child. 

“My name is Tom.” He says in a subdued voice, handing over my wand. 

“Nice to meet you,” I reply, unable to help the smile of relief at having my wand back in my hand. 

Tom doesn’t reply, just gives a small nod, a pout forming on his lips, as he looks down at his scuffed up shoes. 

“Are you. . .” I think of how this could have been me if my parents hadn’t taken me into their home, into their hearts with wide open arms, accepting of all my quirks, “are you happy here Tom?” Surely, this wouldn’t destroy time itself. This was just one muggleborn boy. 

I could take a few years to raise him. 

Return a few years later to my own time, claim to have been in hiding and hopefully have missed the worst of the war. 

I couldn’t just leave him here. 

He’d save my wand. 

Tom looks up at me, meeting my gaze evenly, before rolling his eyes dismissively, clearly thinking the question was to stupid to bother answering if his impassive expression was anything to go by. 

“You’ve been to Hogwarts right?” I ask instead. 

He nods. 

“What year,” I ask, as my half baked idea takes hold in my mind. I’d need to get a job and place first; settle into the magical community of the forties. I was good at potions and wards, not to mention the fact I’d finished my runic apprenticeship so I could find a job in that. I could make a living easily. 

“I start my third year in September.” 

“What day is today,” I ask, tilting my head. There was no way to know how long I’d been out since I’d travelled fifty years into the past. And I couldn’t ask the year without giving myself away. I’d have to look at a newspaper later. 

“June 5th,” he replies evenly, clasping his hands together like a mini adult, “Eric found you yesterday afternoon.” He pauses, “how did you end up outside of Wool’s?”

Deciding it was best to be honest with this already wary teen, I answer with a shrug. “I’m not sure. I was trying to-well not trying. I can apparate. But I guess I must’ve fainted. I’m lucky I didn’t splinch myself to be honest.”

“You are.” Tom agrees. “I’ve read that there’s been cases of inebriated wizards that splinch themselves in half.”

I wrinkle my nose. “And I thought losing half an eyebrow was bad.”

He snorts, smothering the laugh in his throat, and forcing his mouth to remain an even line. 

My heart feels heavy in my chest with sympathy for this boy. 

He was acting in the same careful way Harry danced around his summers with his aunt and uncle, always hoping to get away from the subject entirely. 

“I’m going to come back for you,” I tell him, leaning forward. “Once I get a few things sorted out. But. . .I mean. . .if you want me to.”

Tom leans back, eyes widening. “You don’t mean that,” he mutters. “You won’t come back.”

“But if I was going to,” I try, “would you want me to? I don’t have much. And I still feel like a child myself half of the time, I mean for merlin’s sake I’m barely nineteen, but. . .we could. . .if you want to?” Even I wasn’t sure what I was offering. 

A home. 

Me as what? An older sister? A cool aunt? 

Did it have to be more complicated than a home and maybe some strange sort of family the same way being in the Order had made all the members family of each other. Well, that went for everyone except for Mundungus and Snape. Obviously. 

He gives me a small nod, before getting up and walking rapidly out of the room. Tom doesn’t glance back once. 

It’s only when I’ve said my goodbyes and thanked Mrs. Cole, leaving me in muggle London, completely on my own, that I realize that Tom hadn’t appeared to be taken in by me. He hadn’t fallen under my natural and uncontrolled thrall. 

Mrs. Delacour had told me to practice my thrall. 

Just another thing to add to my list of things to do.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is my twist on the usual time turner fics. . .its going to be a bit of a journey which is why its so long it covers a few years


	4. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The first thing I do is cast an undetectable expansion charm on my bag. It somehow survived time travel and ending up on the streets of London in the year 1940. Only it was now stained terribly on the bottom from the rain, but it looked fine from afar.

I was fifty eight years in the past. 

Fifty eight. 

I take a deep breath and step into Diagon Alley. 

First things first. 

I needed a job and a place to stay. The job first. How else would I be able to pay for anything. I only had a handful of sickles and knuts knocking about in my bag. And I was still wearing the dress from the wedding. 

Maybe I should find some era appropriate robes and muggle clothes first. 

I stop by the apothecary first, still in the same spot as it is in my own time. The older witch working the counter does a double take, before yelling at her assistant, “Matthias, go check on the cauldrons!” 

“Yes ma’am,” Matthias replies back, setting the vials and bottles that he was arranging on the shelves down before disappearing into the back room, not once looking up.

The apothecary smells like a herb section at the market, lavender and mint and the citrusy scent that newts eyes gave off when in potions. There's a sign advertising a buy one get one for a sickle on the cleaning oils. The counter is the same wooden glass case from my time, filled with all the usual potions like a cure for boils and pepper up potion. 

The older witch has the same crooked nose and sharp upturned eyes as the man who runs the apothecary in my time. A son or grandson perhaps? “What do you want,” she snaps. “I don't much want to deal with your kind of trouble.”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “I was wondering-I wanted to leave my name down in your directory for potions masters.” I myself was not a potions master but I could always turn a job down if I felt it was too complex for me to brew. I'd have to spend my small amount of money on some potions books. “I just moved here and could really use the work.”

“Work huh,” she snaps, summoning a thick book as large as a pillow. The pages flip open to the succeeding blank space, right below  _ Tabitha Grey. Medi-witch balms for all your needs. Inquiries upon request.  _ Wordlessly, she hands me a quill. “You moved to the wrong city. Ministry was just here wanting to set up wards. Some muggle trouble apparently.” 

I write my taken name down.  _ Marcelina Chawla. Experience potion brewer. No brewing is too long for the right hand. Price upon request.  _ They must be setting wards up because of the muggle war. Grandmum Tonks hadn't been in the city, but even out in the village outside of Birmingham where she'd grown up, they'd had to black out their windows for the nights because of the raids. 

“Do you know anyone who might want wards set up? Anyone who lives near muggles?” I ask eagerly. The outbreak of the wizarding way has given me lots of practice warding up a house with runic inscriptions. The egyptian hieroglyphs were time consuming, but the ancient wizards had held off foreign invasions for thousands of years; they knew what they were doing. 

The woman tilts her head in thought, glancing up in the air. “The lady who drops off the charmed cleaning supplies at  _ Mrs. Ospreys Housekeeping _ lives in muggle london. If you hurry you might catch her.”

I grin as things fall into place. “Thank you!” It's too much, as I see her smile grow lame, a sleepy look in her eyes. 

I stop smiling, giving her a quick, “sorry,” and a wave and I'm rushing back into the street with the rest of the afternoon shoppers, making my way to Ospreys. It doesn't exist in my time, but it's easy to find, next to the second hand book shop just a little down the street. 

I push my way in, not bothering to browse when I'm looking for a job. Tonks always had to browse if she went into a store, feeling bad when she was just making a return or had to talk to the shopkeeper. 

Waiting my turn at the counter, I look at the dusting rags that go over the counter surfaces by themselves, getting into the nooks and crannies, and at the mop that goes around the floor, drying almost instantly to prevent anyone from slipping. 

“That's my work,” a tall woman speaks up by my side. She's got strawberry blonde hair, a smattering of freckles over her pug nose, and a friendly smile that rivals Fred and George's when they're watching a prank of theirs unfold. She can't be older than my sister, and as heavily pregnant. 

“Oh you must be-well the woman in the apothecary didn't say actually.”

“Mrs. Boyega?” The woman asks. “I'm Winniefred, but everyone just calls me Winnie. What can I do for you?”

“Oh,” I say blankly, trying to come up with a sales pitch on the spot. “Well I heard the ministry's been going around putting up wards because of the muggle war and I was wondering if anyone who lives in muggle london might want some wards of their own.”

“You're a runist,” she exclaims, leading us off the the side so the next witch in line can get to the counter. “Well I suppose not every witch gets hitched right after Hogwarts. Though looking as stunning as you, bet you had to beat suitors off with a hex,” she giggles. “But that actually sounds perfect. My husband owns a townhouse in muggle london and he really doesn't want the building to burn down if the worst was to happen.” 

It was going to happen. 

The muggle war has outlasted Grindelwald. I remembered that much. 

“That's great,” I cry, not believing my luck, and trying to shove the warm feeling that went straight to my cheeks down so I don't enthrall the store. “I can do some unplottables to make any muggle weapon miss and an anti fire inscription.”

“How much,” Winnie asks. “Also do you want to get food at  _ Merlin's Pub _ ? I'd die for a scotch egg right about now! Cravings are the worst.”

“Ten galleons,” I stutter out, not sure how money worked at the moment. Was ten galleons too much or not enough? How far would that take me and how much would getting a flat cost me?

Winnie winces, “that little,” she whispers sharply. “Oh you are young! Did you just finish Hogwarts?”

“I was homeschooled,” I lied, letting her take my arm in hers as she leads us to the pub. Another place that doesn't exist in my time. 

“Ah,” she nods, “well let me give you some free advice it took me a while to figure out. The going price for unplottables is around 25 galleons, or a months rent really. While anti fires are ten I think. Or around that. I've been shopping around for a runist. Do you have a place to live yet,” Winnie asks. 

She seemed like a classic gryffindor.

I wonder what house Tom is in. Probably ravenclaw or slytherin though the latter would be hell for a muggleborn in this time. 

“No,” I admit, tucking the information on prices away for later. “I got in a day ago. Staid the night at the Leaky Cauldron.”

Winnie nods. “Okay. Here's what we do: one of our tenants just moved out, from the attic which is small but has lots of light and is fine for one or two people, so that's what. . .I'll give you the ten galleons and two months rent for both wards. What do you think?”

Maybe Hufflepuff. She had that friendly easy going charm all the best hufflepuffs had. 

“I think you're being incredibly kind,” I admit, feeling a rush of gratitude for having met her. 

She shrugs, “I know how hard it is to get settled. My husband, Randolph, had a hard time of it as a muggleborn with no connections. Too bad for the traditionalists in the family, I was the youngest so it wasn't like I was hurting my brother's matches by marrying Randolph.”

“Well thanks a ton,” I repeat. 

“Ah here we are. We can go to my building after a hearty meal.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I don't even care when a man turns and whistles with a leering grin. 

“Oh and I can tell my friends in case they need any wards or just runic enchantments in general. I live in the building next door. So we'll be neighbors!” She grins warmly as if we're old friend catching up. 

It takes the sting out of missing Sue these last few months. 

Sue. 

She wouldn't be born for another thirty something years! 

The attic is a small fit. But I don't have many things so it doesn't matter much. I've only around ten galleons to my name. But now I've also got a roof. 

Charity shops were my friend as I popped into a muggle store searching for a mattress. I'd need two because I promised a sad lost boy that I'd be back and I had meant it. It's hard to find one that doesn't look like it's been colonized by bed bugs and lice and also isn't straw because I am a 90s girl that knows comfort. 

In the end I get two wooden wardrobes. The larger one needs new hinges but I can just magic that. And the smaller one has a broken leg so they're practically free. I find one mattress on the nicer end and splurge before settle for a plush sofa for myself. A sofa bed looking thing I can transfigure into a bed for myself. 

Then I grab a thick wool coat, a tad on the larger size. I'll have to see one of the buttons that is coming loose. Or maybe I could fix that with a charm. Two dresses, the only two dresses in a size that fits my curves. People were much thinner in the 40s but that might just be because the muggles are living on rations. And a pair of sturdy boots to replace my heels. 

After that, I'm still left with four galleons. 

Merlin's beard. 

At least I'd already gotten potions commissions. Unfortunately that meant that my last few coins in the world would go to buying a cauldron and potions ingredients. 

After I got Tom from Wool’s. 

He was the whole reason I hadn't immediately tried to find a time turner to go home. 

Somehow I get my purchases back to the worn but well taken care of townhouse and up the stairs with a levitation and disillusionment charm. Tom can have the sole room. It's really not much. Just a corner but he deserved his own room. Not like he wouldn't be leaving for Hogwarts soon.

What was I thinking! 

I must be going just as mad as Tonks with her half baked ideas. 

Trying out for quidditch when she can barely stay on a broom and deciding to be an auror when she trips on smooth floors. Not that any of it had stopped her from reaching her goals. That was all mum. 

Mum had no problem arguing with market salespeople until she got a price on watermelon and steak she was satisfied with. 

I walk through London, passing lots of muggle signs about the war. Encouraging people to grow their own food and forget about buying nylons for the duration. It's a strange mirror world when I'm used to the wizarding world being at war while the muggle world provided a safe harbor from Voldemort. 

I get more than a few glances, the forties plaid green dress, but thankfully no one starts following me. I can't exactly hex a muggle the way I'd hex a witch or wizard being a tosser. The last thing I wanted was the ministry coming down on my head when I was out of time. 

And somehow, I remember exactly where Wool’s Orphanage is. 


	5. a promise kept

“I know it's not much,” I say as I carefully watch Tom’s face for a reaction as he takes in the little attic flat. I'd insisted on carrying his trunk up the stairs, all his earthly possessions packed up into his school trunk. “But it's more than I had a week ago.”

He walks around the bare flat, looking it over with veiled mistrust. There's only the sofabed and wooden drawer. I hadn't even thought to get curtains. I was a terrible adult. I hadn't even bothered dusting. 

“Why would you want to live with muggles,” he finally utters with a frown, taking a seat on his trunk. He's thirteen and already the same height as me. Chestnut hair carefully brushed back, with the same regal posture my mum carried herself with. 

I shrug. “Why not? My grandparents are-were muggles and some of the best people I knew.” I correct myself, speaking in past tense about people that had yet to even get together.

He gives me a skeptical look, not missing a thing. “Were?”

“Yeah,” I nod, swallowing thickly, wondering if I would ever see any of my family again. I didn’t know much about time turners, much less how to get one in this era. “They passed away when I was little.” I look around the flat. It was charming in a young adult embarking upon their first place kind of way, the same way Tonk’s flat out of school had been. She’d roomed with three other girls out in London and mum never let me stay the night. 

“Oh you're rooms through there. I figured you'd want some privacy even if the walls are thin. Well, were thin till I did some inscriptions on them. I want to pop down to diagon alley and get a few potions supplies for some commissions.”

Tom nods stiffly, before dragging his trunk into the room. There’s only a mattress with wool sheets and a dresser inside. But I was trying. 

It would take time before I got money. 

Maybe I should’ve just gone home. 

The ministry had fallen. 

Not even Grindlewald had ever managed to invade Britain. 

He doesn’t take long at all in the room, exiting almost as soon as he gets the trunk inside with a hard shove. 

Tom puts his hands in his pocket, standing in the middle of the bare room, glancing at the so called kitchen that was really just a cupboard, a flimsy table and a stove. “Why did you come back?” He doesn’t meet my searching gaze, preferring to look down at his shoes with a carefully blank expression. 

“I said I would.”

He looks up, his brown eyes catching the afternoon light. Winnie really hadn’t been kidding about how much natural light and air reached the flat. It made up for being stuck in the city. “Why,” still wary of me, unsure of what my intentions could be. We were strangers to each other. And growing up as isolated as he had among people who didn’t want to understand him must have been hard. 

“You looked miserable in the orphanage,” I reply easily. “And I-I was adopted. I mean, I was a baby not 13 so it’s not like I want or even expect you to call me mum, I’m only 19, way too young to be a mum really, but. . .I dunno. I get what it's like to not fit in.”

“I wouldn’t want to be like them,” he sneers like Malfoy had every time I’d pass him in the hall. It was a miracle his mouth hadn’t frozen in a permanent sneer really. Draco was going to have a rough time when he left Hogwarts and realized not everyone cared who his father was. 

I’d have to find a way to ease his dislike of muggles. That wouldn’t do, not when I’d just escaped a war over blood purity nonsense. 

Tom Marvolo Riddle. 

That’s the name Mrs. Cole had given me. Marvolo was a wizarding name. 

Could his mum or dad have been magic? 

Maybe his dad had been a wizard and left his muggle mother not knowing she was expecting a child.

The name sets bells ringing in my mind, but I don’t know where I’ve heard it before. Riddle. And I was sure I had heard it.

“Well of course not,” I smile, grabbing my bag, “you’re much better off being yourself. And I hated the whole thrall thing, still do, but it was way worse when I first turned 12. . .13. Still, I would never wish to be anyone other than me.” 

Tom brushes past me and I can't tell if he believes me. Both of us walk side by side to Diagon Alley. Me in my plaid green dress. Tom in brown trousers a few sizes too large, a shirt that might have once been bright blue and a sweater vest. 

40s fashion was so strange. 

I'm too busy elbowing my way through the leaky cauldron to care who stares. There's always at least one and honestly how did full fledged veela even cope. No wonder they all lived hidden away from the world. 

I tap the bricks and make a note to get Tom some everyday robes that actually fit. I was terrible at charms but I could probably improve his hand me downs. The Weasleys had great hand me downs unlike mum who could only offer dress robes that you needed help to lace up and heels that were a hazard to my health. Dad did have a ton of flannels and old t shirts that Tonks and I were always borrowing. 

First, the apothecary. 

This time, Matthias is minding the shop on his own. His beige shirtsleeves are covered with an assortment of goop from the potion ingredients. 

I tap the bell on the counter. 

The young boy, more than likely my age, turns around and his entire face promptly goes red as he looks me over in that way that makes me wince internally. His expression goes vacant as I try to read him the list of ingredients I'll be needing for babbling beverage and three sets of beautification potions. 

Matthias just nods wide eyed, staring intently at me and not moving an inch.

Tom rolls his eyes as he looks through the glass containers labeled eye of newt, salamander, and gillyweed. 

I sigh, “here,” I say instead, shoving the list at him and starting to count the sickles to pay for everything. 

He blinks blankly, before nodding, “of course miss.”

“Pathetic,” Tom mutters under his breath. 

I can't help but snort, glad he isn't like that at all. “That's not nice,” I add, remembering I'm supposed to be setting a good example. Ha, good example and I’m not even twenty. “How much’ll that be?” 

Matthias blinks, shoving more dittany than I needed into the bag. “Um,” he says trying to shake himself out of the stupor, “for you-I mean. . .what's your name Miss?” 

“Marcelina,” I offer, placing the sickles on the countertop. The cauldron would have to be second hand. Hopefully I could find better work in runes soon.

Tom, appears as if conjured by air at my side, speaks up for the first time since we’d left our flat. “Miss Chawla,” as he regards Matthias. 

Matthias parrots him, “nice to meet you Miss Chawla.” 

I place the ingredients in my bag, unimpressed. “I'm sure I'll be seeing you around.” And I turn on my heel and leave the store, sure that Tom will come along. He's 13, young but hardly a child that needed me to hold his hand. 

I opt for a set of russian doll cast iron cauldrons, a little dented up but, I note running my hands over the metal, they'll work just fine. And a bargain at only 2 galleons for the set. 

“You need anything,” I try, wanting Tom to feel comfortable asking for things he needs or even just wants. 

He looks over at me from where he's looking at the books locked in a glass cage with titles like  _ Exploring the Veil  _ and  _ Magick Moste Wiked.  _ The kind of books I had devoured once I'd finished owls and Professor Flitwick had been willing to sign any slip for the restricted section. They’re contents disgustingly engrossing. 

Tom shakes his head. “No.”

I go to the til with my pile of cauldrons, “just these for today,” I tell the young woman working the till, cherry red lipstick still neat hours into her shift. 

She looks up from this week's edition of witches weekly, her lips curling down as she takes a good long look at me. “The cauldrons,” she says pointedly, still looking at me like I'm a particularly annoying weed in her garden. 

I nod. “Yes. Two galleons right.”

“Right,” she mutters, pursing her lips as she takes the galleons from me. “Anything else I can do for. . .you,” she says, raising a brow as she stares at me. 

I smile stolidly, refusing to let her get to me, before shrinking down the cauldrons and packing them up into my bag. I look over my shoulder to Tom, “let's go get something to eat. I'm a terrible cook.” 

He looks at the shop girl darkly, eyes narrowing, but follows along without comment until we hit the streets. 

With the muggle world on rations, we might as well get food here in Diagon at the green grocer; stop by Dragonflame for a loaf of bread; get food for the road because I meant it when I said can't cook. Oh shoot- “I should've gotten a cookbook,” I utter, halting in the middle of the walkway. 

Tom keeps walking, heading from the green grocer. “We shouldn't go back there.”

“Charity shops have bloody good deals,” I counter. As soon as I got started on the potions the sooner I could get paid. 

“Why didn't you just thrall her,” he asks quietly, watching passively as I grab a basket and try to figure out what to buy. “The man too. He would've given you everything for free.”

I shake my head, thinking apples and bananas seemed healthy. Maybe something green? “She was a bitch wasn't she.” 

The old lady next to us shoots me a dirty look.

“But,” I shrug, “that's not right. And I have to shop there again.” 

“It would be easy for you wouldn't it?”

I shake my head. “I can't control it. I never had anyone to teach me,” I admit, glad he's feeling like talking. “And some of it isn't even me. Like I'm not doing anything and people are still idiots.” It was like people had never seen a pretty face in their lives. There were beautiful people everywhere. Everyone was attractive in their own way from Fred's easy going grin and Luna's insightful commentary. 

Now all I was doing was working myself up over nothing.

“You used it on Mrs. Cole,” he points out. “I heard her. She was trying to turn you against me: to keep you from adopting me. She has always hated me.  _ Dirty muggle,”  _ he spits, brow furrowing. 

I frown deeply. “Don't-Tom, I don't know how they treated you but you can't say that. Not all muggles are terrible people. Just like how some wizards are horrible.”

He looks back at me woodenly, his eyes closed off. But nods all the same. 

I sigh, realizing Rome, like Hogwarts, wasn't built in a day, and decide to change the subject onto lighter topics.

“What's your opinion on carrots? Roasting them shouldn't be hard?”

“Get beans,” Tom orders. 

I get both. “Want fish and chips for dinner?” 

Tom doesn't answer: busy people watching, people shopping for their families. An abundance of food in the store while muggles rationed in their parts of London. 

We pay and Tom carries the bag of fish and chips as we head back to our flat for the night. 

We eat dinner in silence as I go over the potions I'll be making tonight. Tom has one of his own books out, a battered copy of  _ Witches and Wizards to Know. _

I'm still stirring the babbling brew when Tom shuts himself in his room for the night. 

Merlin what had I gotten myself into.

  
  



	6. the fall of france

The mood of the crowd matches the overcast skies, grey like the smoke emerging from chimneys. France had surrendered to Germany. And the shops that had held out hope that the Germans would be stopped before they reached the coast board up their windows with wooden planks. 

Through it all we push onwards through the crowd. I kept my head down as we make it way with tote bags full of books, more powdered dragon claw, and jars of frog brains. We had gotten too many books this trip for me to carry myself: books on the british kitchen as well as 1000 and 1 potions, A potioneers directory, and Runes through the ages. I had told Tom twice he could get books as well, and had gone for the darker tombs that chilled the air when opened such as  _ Morgana's Curing Primer  _ and Un _ obscuring the Mind: Legilimens.  _

While the subject matter veered dark, I was taking a leaf out of mum’s book and treating it with normalcy. I was still working on building trust between us. 

Tom had yet to spend any more time than he needed to outside his room and it worries me. 

I'm lost in my thoughts, mentally going through my list of current potion commissions and the short list which was really only one family that had written to me about setting wards on their home in preparation of the coming war. “Maybe wizards just don't know about the muggle war,” I say out loud, inviting conversation with Tom. 

He's currently glaring at a gaggle of teenage boys strutting about in their crisp army uniforms, still children playing at war. 

The sounds of hexes flying past my head, missing me by a hair, in the dark halls of the ministry still haunted my dreams. Flashes of green light as people I knew fell dead. Sometimes it was people who had died, like the cousin I had only just started getting to know or a schoolmate I’d shared classes with for years. Other times, green light flashed and my parents fell dead. My sister ripped from my life. 

They must’ve felt my gaze on them because they catch sight of me in the crowd, like bloodcaps gone into frenzy at the scent of blood in the air, and whistle, walking towards us with boyish grins. 

I swallow thickly, and force myself to ignore them, placing my hand on Tom’s arm as I walk purposely forward, trying to make it to the corner to apparate away. Muggles would think us disappearing was a trick of the light. 

“Need help with the bags love,” a gangly brown haired boy with a fox face, and clearly the leader, says as he walks up to me. 

“No,” I say, ignoring his friends who walk steps behind us, eagerly watching. 

“Don’t be like that love,” he says with a too wide grin, ignoring Tom completely. 

I scowl, turning around to face him, “bugger off!”

His smile curves into a contemptuous sneer, “slag!”

I roll my eyes, my hand tight on Tom’s arm as we round the corner and I apparate us away. 

Unlike all the times I’ve side apparated, Tom seems positively unbothered, setting the bag on the countertop, carefully taking out each book and tapping it with his wand, performing a nonverbal  _ reparo  _ with an ease that took me ages. 

With false disinterest, he states, “you should have hexed them.”

There was a chasm between the wizard Tom, who was the perfect picture of niceties that had me rolling my eyes as he charmed the shopkeepers into giving us discounts, and the Tom who went about muggle London caught between wanting to curling into himself and striding as though he was a king among the unwashed masses. 

Both sides had a deep dislike of muggles. 

“It would have been satisfying,” I admit, “until the Ministry arrests me and throws me in Azkaban.”

“The ministry shouldn't defend them when they asked for it.” He pops the kettle on despite his dislike for tea. 

I frown. “Well they were being complete twats but what teenage boy isn't. And you can't solve every problem by hexing them.”

“There's ways around the ministry,” the teenager currently making food in our kitchen states nonchalantly. 

“You don't have to,” I tell him, joining him in the tiny kitchen that could hardly be called a kitchen. “I can whip something up.”

Smugly, Tom replies, “you burnt toast,” as if he was the guardian. 

“I was distilling the beautification brew. Merlin's beard that potion is tedious,” I complain, decoding to start multiplying out food instead. I was thinking of handing some food out to our neighbors or donating it to the local church. “And that's not the point. You can't just go around hexing people who annoy you.”

“They're muggles,” Tom replies as if that's a winning argument.

“So,” I shrug, tapping my wand over the loaf of rye bread until the counter’s full, “it's not their fault I'm part veela. It's not mine either mind you,” I add thinking of the year Aerin Travers dumped a goblet of pumpkin juice over my head because her boyfriend wouldn't stop ogling me. “Sometimes things can't be helped and you just have to deal with them. Morgana’s tit I sound like my mum. You know,” I explain, smiling at the alarmed look that crosses his features at the sound of me cursing, “I was five and fell out of a tree. Banged my knee up. Well, instead of running to St. Mungos, my mum gave me a whole lecture about how life was hard and I could very well put healing balm on my knee by myself.” 

Tom snorts, the corners of his lips turning up, as he adds half an onion and a generous sprinkling of salt to the pot of beans shimmering on the stovetop. “What happened to your adoptive parents.”

“You mean my parents,” I correct. They were the people who raised me after all. No qualifiers or explanations needed for why I was brown and they weren't. 

He nods, avoiding my gaze as I use the paper bags to put the multiplied food into them for the neighbors. Hopefully that would expose Tom to muggles in a healthier setting. 

“Well,” I start, coming up with a reasonable explanation and story for myself. “they. . .,” I swallow thickly before uttering a great fear of mine, “they were killed by Grindelwald. Because of me. Dad had-he'd wanted to go to France where he'd heard about a veela community to. . . well to help me. But I guess someone sold them out. I was supposed to go meet them in a few days when I got the news.”

His features take on a pensive look as he peels some carrots and potatoes to add to his soup, his mouth set in a frown. “And your real parents?”

I wrinkle my nose, “my adoptive parents are my real parents. But if you're asking about my biological parents then I don't know. I don't know anything about them. Only they're probably dead.”

Tom frowns. “My mother was a muggle. Otherwise she wouldn't have died. But my father was a great wizard. I was named after him. At least that was what Mrs. Cole said.”

“Witches and wizards die too,” I point out, finishing up the last bag. They all had a box of sugar, a loaf of bread, and half a kilo of beans.

He doesn't respond to that. 

Classic orphan woes. I remember imagining that I was some lost princess hidden away by mum and dad until it was safe again. Or sometimes I was some special veela that was more powerful and smarter and better. 

Childish fantasies the lot of them. 

“Let that sit by itself,” I tell him, “I want to hand out some bags of food to our neighbors.” 

Tom raises a brow, but obediently helps me with the bags and follows me out to the stairs. 

I knock on the first door, yellow paw prints painted on the front door. An older woman with blue and green tortoiseshell glasses cracks open the door, sticking her foot in the crack as a cat paws for freedom. “Yes? Can I help you?” Her smile grows and she reaches her hand out to me, placing it on my shoulder dreamily. 

Damn me and my bloody ideas. 

Tonks was the outgoing friendly one. Not me. “Just wanted to drop off a bag of food,” I say with a small smile, anxiety welling up in my throat, wishing she would keep her hands to herself. “We live in the flat upstairs.” 

“Ah yes,” she nods, “Winnie mentioned she'd found new tenants. I just had no idea,” her eyes roam over me once more before she shakes herself out of it. “I'm Victoria. Victoria Connolly.”

“Marcelina,” I offer, looking over at Tom with a pointed look. 

He looks at her owlishly, the sad lonely boy I’d first seen at the orphanage all over again. 

I nudge his side. 

“Tom.” He says smoothly transitioning into a small shy smile, as he offers her a bag, “would you like me to bring it in for you?”

“Oh no dear,” Victoria says. “Mittens’ll bolt if I open the door anymore.” She takes the bag herself, smiling at us. 

For his part, Tom looks relieved. He wasn't as smooth of an actor as he believed himself to be. 

“I wouldn't bother with Mr and Mrs Lewis on the first floor. Gotta load of pride the pair of ‘em.” Victoria adds, lifting her leg higher to prevent her clawing cat from jumping over her foot. 

“We’ll keep that in mind,” I tell her. 

“If you don't mind me asking dear,” Victoria says looking between me and Tom like we were an enticing runic inscription to translate.

I blink, not having hashed that part out yet. I didn't want to embarrass the teen after all by being all ‘well legally he's my son even though he's just six year younger than me’. The same gap between me and Tonks that had never felt like much to us. Not when we were flinging mud and bringing gnomes into the house with the intention of teaching them magic much to mums chagrin. 

Tom cuts in smoothly, his voice wavering in a shy cloying way as he leaned in, “Marcelina and I were neighbors. Our mums were very close and she-when my mum passed from consumption,” he trails off, looking down at the ground with tears in his eyes.

He had to be in slytherin. 

“Oh you poor thing!” Victoria says throwing a hand over her chest. “Let me know if you need anything.” 

“Of course,” I say, heading down the stairs to the next flat. “Nice meeting you.” 

When her door closes, Tom wipes the sappy expression from his perfectly proportioned features that I can already see have the beginnings of a heartbreaker written all over them, and scoffs. “Mittens.”

I snort, “not as bad as naming a dog ‘dog’.” 

The corners of his mouth lift up in the smallest of smiles.

It quickly disappears as he notes without any real judgement, “that woman is a lesbian.”

“Was not!” I say shocked. Wasn't that a rare thing in this time period? The magical community had come a long way in that regard since the forties even if they were still piss poor on the subject of muggles and muggleborns. 

Tom looks over at me as if I'm daft. “The way she looked at you,” he says archly. 

“Everyone looks at me,” I counter with a roll of my eyes. 

He shakes his head, rolling his eyes, “It's not about them looking at you,” he says snottily, “it's about how.” 

I shrug, not really caring about the muggle woman's sexual preferences. Especially when I spy a book I don't remember buying in Tom’s pocket. “What'd you have there,” I motion, inclining my head. 

“Nothing,” he lies smoothly, meeting my gaze evenly. 

“Tom,” I say harshly, “Did you steal a book?”

He glances away from me, shoulders falling as his grin tightens on the grocery bags. “Are you going to take me back to Wool’s?” 

“What? No, that's not what we're talking about,” I state. “I asked you if you wanted anything.”

“You don't have much money,” he points out in a small voice, sounding honest for a change instead of practiced. 

“I could've made it work,” I say, trying to catch his eye, “I don’t need the cookbooks if we’re being honest. Or. . .I don’t know but Tom when you want something just ask. Okay.” He still won’t meet my searching gaze, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor. 

I reach out, putting my hand on his shoulder lightly, “hey, look at me.” 

He looks at my hand on his shoulder first, as if I’m some flobberworm that’s crawled onto his shoulder, before reluctantly meeting my eyes. 

“I’m not angry,” I tell him, “I know you like books. I mean we bought a ton today, but you can’t just take things just because you don’t have money for them. Okay. Just tell me you want something and I’ll figure it out.”

“Even if it’s a gold cauldron,” he asks. 

“Within reason,” I add with a small smile. “Gold cauldrons might look snazzy but they’re rubbish for potions making. Merlin, I can’t believe I studied runes and can’t seem to get away from stirring cauldrons all day long.” I take my hand off his shoulder, continuing on down the stairs. 

He follows after me. 

  
  



	7. the sound of bombs

The house shakes as another bomb drops a few streets over as I carefully stir counterclockwise forty times to reach the perfect shade of pink, neither too red or too orange, but an intense hue all on its own like a dollop of cherry blossoms falling onto grass. 

“I’m going to scream if I have to stir again,” I complain to my teen captive audience who had only come out of his room when the sirens had sounded once again. I was pretty sure Tom wasn't confident in my wards. But they'd held the past month. “Or make any potion really,” I frown, finishing my forty stirs and adding nettles. “Maybe now the wizards will start freaking out over the air raids and hire me for my runes work,” I reason to myself. 

The potion turns a poison frog green. 

I turn the fire off and leave it to cool, grabbing my book on alternate magical channeling which had a nice thick section on talismen. The bracelet had somehow brought me here, scalding my wrist before I had blacked out. 

If it had brought me here there had to be a way for it to take me back. 

Talisman and time travel seemed to be too specific as I skim through the chapter coming up short. 

“They probably already had wards,” Tom points out, not looking up from his stolen book. 

“Or,” I reply, raising a brow, “they need wards because of the war. Muggle or Grindelwald.” 

He ignores me. 

“I could start applying to jobs,” I continue thinking out loud even if I didn't have any references seeing as my runes master hadn't been born yet. “So that I don't get arthritis in my wrist by the time I'm twenty.” 

Tom rolls his eyes. “You're not going to get a muggle disease.”

“You don't know that.” I was going to buy a daily prophet for the adverts then. I refused to get stuck making potions. If I had offered my services for the Order it was to help defeat Voldemort. Not because I liked standing over a cauldron for hours. 

Another bomb drops, the explosion far off in the distance, transforming the night sky like fireworks on bonfire night. After the first air raid, I'd gone over the glass planes carefully inscribing them to be shatter resistant. It had taken the better part of a day, but runes lasted longer than charms. 

I go back over the chapter, this time not skimming. Talisman were like wands, only they could be anything of sentimental significance to the witch or wizard but worked best when they had some precious metal or gemstone. They had small quirks that set them apart from wands, but nothing that suggested they could perform time magic. 

Time magic was already so complex to begin with. Unsteady and unstable without the use of a time turner. 

“Is that a talisman,” Tom asks, with a practiced care as he glances over at me with a neutral expression. I wonder how long he's held back asking. 

“Yeah. I think it belonged to my birth mother?” I hold out my arm towards him on the other end of the sofa so that he can get a good look at the bracelet. The enamel glitters like the enchanted ceiling at hogwarts. Though I suppose I'm not supposed to know about that. Had to keep my story straight. “Well that and my wand but I think the veela hair might've been my biological father.”

Tom nods, satisfied with observing from afar, “lots of people hold the misconception that veela are only female.” 

I snort. He was so ridiculous, speaking in the most pretentious way possible, but unlike Percy who put in so much effort to appear cultured and wise and only came off forced and like a complete knob, Tom made it seem natural. 

Or maybe people in this time really all spoke like the broadcasters on dad's radio programs? 

“Where'd you read that,” I prompt. He wouldn't be taking care of magical creatures until this upcoming year if he chooses it. 

He shrugs with false modesty, a smirk forming on lips, “I was doing research on the electives Hogwarts offers. Muggle studies is useless. Divination is unpredictable and rubbish for the most part. That leaves care of magical creatures, ancient runes, and arithmancy.”

“All three,” I wince, thinking back to my fifth year. Sure, I was a good student--when I applied myself. But it was hard to take classes that didn't actually suit my interests. Too often I would be reading the textbook for another class instead. 

Tom nods. 

“I could give you some runes lessons,” I offer, thinking he might be interested. He devoured knowledge like a Ravenclaw, observant eyes always learning as he took in the world around him. 

Instantly, Tom scowls. “I don't need anyone's help.”

“I wasn't saying-Tom I was just offering,” I try, rushing to fix the problem, but it's too late. The reserved teenager flees to his room and shuts the door with a wave of his hand, the slam echoing through the small flat like a faroff explosion in the night. 

We had been doing so well. 

I resign myself to doing research on talisman magic for the rest of the night. 

  
  



	8. platform 9 3/4

“We could have just apparated,” Tom grumbles as he pushes his trolley through Kings Cross.

In truth, I wanted to see how the station looked during the forties and it never felt like platform 9 ¾ if you didn't go through the brick wall. My gaze is towards the crowd of muggles. We blend in perfectly as they place their children on the trains destined for the countryside. All their clothes are quaint and boring and I wish women could wear jeans already. I wish t shirts were invented so I could find the baggy-est ones to wear. 

There's tears on parents cheeks and I realize soon I'll be alone too. 

Winnie is practically bed ridden in her last month and looking after children takes up any energy she can muster up. Matthias does nothing but stare at me with his face gone red. 

And most importantly, Tom’s the only person I really know in this era. 

I sigh, not having expected to miss my family this much all of a sudden. It had been an entire summer since I'd somehow appeared in 1940 and there hadn't been much time to miss my parents who might have been killed. Or my sister who I would bet my wand was still fighting the good fight against Voldemort. 

This was the summer that I had been expecting would be when I left the nest after all. Finally. 

But now-

“It's rude to stare,” Tom deadpans, jolting me out of my stupor. 

“I wasn't staring,” I lie, playing with the bracelet around my wrist, running my fingers over the roughly cut diamonds. “I was just thinking. And also really wanting a pair of trousers.” My eyes flicker to him, wanting to see his reaction. 

I think women could wear trousers in the magical community of the era. 

“I thought you hated when people stare at you,” he replies evenly and without judgement, telling me everything I needed to know.

No trousers for me then. 

Then, Tom adds as we reach platform 9, “I can make it from here.”

“Are you sure,” I ask him as we stop by the bricks leading to the Hogwarts Express platform. “I don't mind going, closest to Hogwarts I'll ever be.” 

He meets my gaze evenly. “It's fine.” 

“Oh,” I nod, before smirking, “You don't want me to embarrass you in front of your friends?” Tonks had gone through that phase: all band t-shirts, purple and blue hair, and being too cool for school while listening to the weird sisters. 

Tom scoffs, “hardly. There's just no point in having you go all the way there,” he trails off. “You don't have to come. I told you that before.”

I roll my eyes. “I'm already here but fine. If you don't want me there I'll just see you off here.”

He blinks. 

We'd had this conversation yesterday, when he'd mentioned leaving all by himself. I wasn't sure if this was just another way in which he held himself away from the world or if he really just did prefer being on his own. Maybe it was both. 

A chicken and egg question. 

“All right then.”

“Let me know if you plan on coming home for the christmas holidays,” I add, knowing better than to assume anything that went on in his head.  _ Home.  _ That's what the flat had become over the past few weeks, when I'd get back from dropping off the potions commissions at the post office, collapsing into my sofa and wishing take out was a common thing. 

At least ward requests had started coming in when it became clear that a muggle bomb was just as much of a threat to wizards houses as they were to muggle buildings. The destruction of an old witch's townhouse had made the prophets front page taking over the usual news coverage of Grindelwald.

He nods, not seeming very sincere. 

I can't imagine him coming home for christmas. He's seemed lukewarm about our living arrangements at best, and at worst I wonder if he'd preferred if I had just left him back at Wool’s. 

Before I can second guess myself, I wrap my arms around his shoulders, pulling him into a hug. “Have a good school year,” I utter, feeling emotional, all the things that have been weighing on my mind suddenly bubbling up, and hoping I'm wrong and that he'll come back to London for the holidays. 

Tom stiffens in my arms, leaning away, trying not to make it seem like he wants to flee. “Thank you,” he responds, pulling out of my embrace, taking a step back. 

I smile, giving a small nod. “Okay then. I'll see you. Maybe have enough for a house. Need a proper job first though,” I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, wishing I knew how to do those nice braids and updos like my mum so my hair wasn't all over the place. 

He nods woodenly, a goodbye in his books and without another word, he walks through the bricks and into platform 9 ¾. 

  
  



	9. letters to tom

Dear Tom M. Riddle, 

Winnie has had her baby. A boy. She's been over a few times, correcting my charms mostly. I do have a very rigid wrist for charms when it should be flexible. At least I've finally gotten away from potions. Not completely, but someone at the apothecary bought an item from Borgin and Burkes that turned out to be hexed (who is surprised though) and I offered to write the runes out needed to break most hexes. I say hexes because I’m no curse breaker. Other than that, life is much the same here, though much more boring without you, and I’ve shamelessly been over tons to Winnies because she can cook. 

Marcelina. 

Dear Tom M. Riddle, 

Mr. Burke, of Borgin and Burke’s, commissioned me to translate an old runic text he wishes to sell to customers only most people don’t know very much about runes but I guess if you’ve got the money to spend. We haggled over the price for hours, the man’s a fiend which explains why his business is going so well. Now that would be all good and well except the amount of Grindelwald praise I have to hear! Not that it’s any secret how divisive the man is. I can admit wishing the statue of secrecy away but enslaving people! Then there’s the beastly way they think about people like me. Haha, get it, beastly. Beasts. Magical Creatures. I’m sure you understood the first time. You are clever like that. Still, sixty galleons is sixty galleons. 

Also do you mind if I pop into your room and clean? 

Yours, 

Marcelina. 

Dear Tom M. Riddle, 

Happy Halloween! It's much more somber here in London. More and more men and boys are being drafted. Then the kids have been carted off to the countryside as raids keep happening nearly each day it seems. My work keeps me busy. I've found steady work inscribing enchanted mirrors. The production is slow but very fun coming up with each personality though I have to use up so much healing balm on my hands. At least Grindelwald has been bogged down in eastern europe. Russian might have rolled out the welcome wagon but Ukraine and Lithuania are keeping up the good fight. Can't say I'm not glad that you're safe up in school. Do you like ancient runes and arithmancy so far? Care of magical creatures seems wonderful. And I'm not just speaking as part creature. As per your note (a sentence is hardly a letter Tom Marvo Riddle!) I've left your room alone. There better not be mold or devils snare growing in there. Mum always did complain that men are terribly messy. Though she was also just a superbly neat person. Couldn't leave so much as a jumper on the sofa. 

Yours, 

Marcelina. 

Dear Tom, 

Your birthday is coming up. Can't say I'm not disappointed you won't be coming down but I imagine you want to enjoy Hogwarts as much as you can. Wish I had gotten to go to any wizard school at all. Anyway, what do you want for your birthday? 

And christmas? 

We’ll just have to celebrate when I see you again in the summer. 

Happy Christmas. 

Yours, 

Marcelina. 

  
  



	10. christmas with winnie

Winnie is only four years older than me yet she already has three children who are currently running around instead of helping as we both donate our time in the soup kitchens. Her husband is out helping the few old muggle men left to put up christmas decorations. A health problem, Edward has mumbled as an explanation of why he wasn't fighting on the continent like so many fellow englishmen. 

So many people had lost their homes to the bombs, and if Winnie duplicates the food while I act as lookout, both of us meet each other's eyes and laugh. Handing out generous portions of baked beans and chicken soup that's more vegetable than chicken but it's better than nothing. 

It's early in the morning but the London sky is a milky grey, hiding away any sunlight. 

“Tom stayed at Hogwarts then,” Winnie asks, as she carefully taps her wand against the soup pot and the pot fills once more. 

I nod, “safer though can't lie, I miss him.” He wasn't the most talkative person in the world, but he was certainly my closest friend. With Winnie, it just wasn't the same. 

She nods, “ah I miss the pumpkin pastries at Hogwarts. And the chicken pot pie,” she grins. “You don’t mind if I send him something for Christmas?”

I shake my head, mentally reminding myself to get her three kids gifts as well next time I was in Diagon Alley. “Can never have too many presents.” 

“You want to go with us to my parents later?” So you don't spend Christmas alone, she doesn't say. 

“Actually,” I shrug, “I already had plans. Just a small dinner the Burke’s are throwing. Hopefully no ones stupid enough to try hexing me.” 

Winnie rolls her eyes, “Who'd want to hex you. I think even the women here want to snog you.”

My face grows warm, “I dunno. Some wizards are stupid.”

“You mean Knott and his outrageous beast bill,” she nods, catching on, “that whole family's rotten. I mean, everyone knows who wrote the sacred 28 book! Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find someone to snog by new years.”

“Winnie,” I complain. 

“What! I have to live vicariously through you. Not that I don't love my husband but still. It'd be fun to have a bit of gossip.” 

I shake my head. “It's not the snogging that gets me. I just feel though no one I've ever gone out with cares about me. They're too busy staring or calling me exotic.” I think back on my valentines date back in fifth year. Colin Wilson had spilled the tea, cup overflowing when I was just trying to have a conversation. Such a turn off. 

“You'll find someone,” she says, patting my arm. “Not everyone can be as lucky as me and find their person during school,” Winnie boasts.

I roll my eyes, laughing all the same. “Oh just serve the damn soup,” I retort. At least I would be too busy on Christmas day to miss my family, but in the late night hours, mum and Tonks and dad and Remus and little baby Teddy, whose hair changed color the second he was born, were all I could think about. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of all the people I had grown close to. Ron who was a bit all over the place like my sister, but had a good heart. Hermione who was always ready to offer help even when it sounded more like nagging then help but at the end of the day there was no one better to cast a charm. Ginny who was always cheering me on to whack the gnomes even as I winced, missing by a large margin.

I didn’t let myself think I’d never see them again. That wasn’t an option. 

But for now, 1940. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> experimenting with shorter chapters. tom will be back next chapter.


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